The future of System
Administration
Kris Buytaert
Apache CloudStack Collaboration Summit
Amsterdam 2013
@krisbuytaert

Kris Buytaert
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
I used to be a Dev,
Then Became an Op
Chief Trolling Officer and Open Source
Consultant @inuits.eu
Everything is an effing DNS Problem
Building Clouds since before the bookstore
Some books, some papers, some blogs
Evangelizing devops

Why Me ?

Why Me ?

The future is here,
it's just not evenly distributed
yet

Why we study history ?
●
Because I`m a grumpy old frustrated sysadmin
●
Because I`m an old opiniated guy
●
Because history repeats
●
We need to learn from our mistakes

What has changed
●
Software was
delivered on CD's,
then DVD's,
●
Then online ,
periodically
●
Then internally , more
frequently
●
Continuously

Deploying an Infrastructure
●
1996 : Manual Installations
●
2001 : Mondo rescue
= Reproducable single instances

Deploying an Infrastructure
●
1996 : Manual Installations
●
2001 : Mondo rescue
●
2003 : SystemImager
•
Reproducable Infrastructure , with
“OVERRIDES”
•
Fast Multicast Image deployments
•
Image Sprawl (thank you VMware)

Deploying an Infrastructure
●
1996 : Manual Installations
●
2001 : Mondo rescue
●
2003 : SystemImager
●
2005 : Dreaming of Jeos + IAC (Cfengine)
•
Kickstart / FAI

Deploying an Infrastructure
●
1996 : Manual Installations
●
2001 : Mondo rescue
●
2003 : SystemImager
●
2005 : Dreaming of Jeos + IAC (CFengine)
●
2008 : Actual JeOS + IAC
●
2010 : Vagrant for development

What has changed
●
End users
●
1 user using their own PC,
●
500 users using the intranet application
●
500000 users the cloud / saas
(.eu)

Physical to Virtual
WARNING : Adoption vs Introduction
●
Up till 2000 , Virtualization was a desktop
thing, running emulation on your desktop (Plex,
Bochs
●
Early 2000's Paravirtualization , Xen starts and
gains adoption
●
August 2006 : Amazon announced EC2
●
2009 : US started adopting EC2, Europe never
really did
●
2012 – now : Private clouds

Virtualization should be Cheap
●
1 host with way too much services
•
●
No isolation, dependency hell , management
hell
1 host multiple vm's , same CAPEX
•
VM's are cheap !
●
Public clouds => multiple vm's , growing OPEX
●
Private clouds => multiple vm's same CAPEX

What has changed
●
End users working 9-5
●
Local users using your application during
daytime
●
A global economy, no downtime an be
tolerated

High Availability & Scaleout
●
KISS
●
Clustered Storage is finally in it's 10's
●
Most apps still don't get it
•
Stateless vs Statefull

For years we've tolerated humans to to make
structural manual changes to the infrastructure
our critical applications are running on.
Whilst at the same time demanding those critical
applications to go trough rigid test scenarios.
Who let this happen ?

Infrastructure as Code
●
Treat configuration automation as code
●
Development best practices
•
Model your infrastructure
•
Version your cookbooks / manifests
•
Test your cookbooks/ manifests
•
Dev/ test /uat / prod for your infra
●
Model your infrastructure
●
A working service = automated ( Application Code +
Infrastructure Code + Security + Monitoring )
●
Think Puppet, Chef, Cfengine, ....

Testdriven Infrastructure

Jenkins Pipeline

A pipeline
●
Checkout code
●
Upload to Repo
●
Syntax
●
Deploy on Test
●
Style
●
Check Puppetruns
●
Code Coverage
●
Check Icinga
●
Tests
●
Promote to UAT
●
Build
●
More Tests
●
Package

Repository Management

Continuous Delivery or Deployment
of Infrastructure

Orchestration
●
Distributed ssh++
●
Trigger actions on selected nodes
●
Think : Mcollective, Ansible, Salt, Rundeck
●
(& Discuss :))

nd
Orchestration 2
●
While ....
●
First install X
●
When it is ready configure Y
●
Then notify Z
●
Think : Noah , Zookeeper, Serf , Juju
gen

Juju

Serf
Serf is a decentralized solution for service
discovery and orchestration that is lightweight,
highly available, and fault tolerant.
Gossip based, Detecting Failure, etc.
By HashiCorp

Deploying an Infrastructure
●
1996 : Manual Installations
●
2001 : Mondo rescue
●
2003 : SystemImager
●
2005 : Dreaming of Jeos + IAC (CFengine)
●
2008 : Actual JeOS + IAC
●
2010 : Vagrant
●
2014: Stateless , Immutable infrastructure ?

Are Docker, Packer , next ?
Stateless
Immutable

#monitoringsucks -> #monitoringlove
●
1996 : BigBrother
●
2001: Netsaint => Nagios + OpenNMS
●
2009: Shootout => Nagios (& Forks) clear
winner
●
2011: @lusis #monitoringsucks
●
2012: @ulfmansson #monitoringlove

I love CheckMK
●
Autodetection
●
Multiplexing
●
Trend Forecasting

I hate CheckMK
•
Autodetection ?
•
•
Functionalities
•
•
Service,
eg. vhosts etc
Single Source of Truth

Monitoring & Metrics
•
Oculus , Skyline, Riemann, Esper,
•
FlapJack (2nd incarnation)
•
BPM & Monitoring
•
Creating Information out of this data
•
Big data
•
Machine Learning

I`m scared of the future !
●
Juniors
●
Lack of Passion
●
Broken education

Our role tomorrow:
●
Teacher (for both collegues and suppliers)
●
Student
●
Math Expert
●
Developer
●
Troubleshooter
●
Evangelist
●
Shrink
●
Gap Bridger

Work to be done..
●
#releasemanagement
●
#Backupsucks
●
#printingsucks

Every 18 months, automate yourselve out of your
job
Someone at Google, longtime ago

CfgMgmtCamp.eu
Gent
3 & 4 February 2014
Ansible, Chef, Puppet, Cfengine, Rudder,
Juju,Saltstack, Foreman & You ?

Contact
Kris Buytaert
Kris.Buytaert@inuits.be
Further Reading
@krisbuytaert
http://www.krisbuytaert.be/b
log/
http://www.inuits.be/
Inuits
Duboistraat 50
2060 Antwerpen
Belgium
891.514.231
+32 475 961221